Bearing It All (Alpha Werebear Shifter Paranormal Romance) (14 page)

“Make me... Oh God, Ash,” I moaned under my breath. “You’re making me... I’m gonna...”

Before I could manage to get all the words out around my forced groans, the first wave of cool relief spread from my core to my toes. My warm, wet pleasure slid out of me as I breathed his name again and again, not wanting to let go of my fantasy.

I smiled, pulling my hand from between my legs and stretching out flat on my bed before I curled up again.

My whole being vibrated with the surging, fuzzy, heart-thumping aftershocks of my climax with every breath I took. I closed my eyes tight and then opened them again, hoping when I did that I’d still be next to Ash, like I was in my fantasy. I hoped that when I opened my eyes, I’d have my head on his arm and that he’d be stroking my belly with his fingertips, then kissing my ear and my neck.

Then, he’d be pushing against me with another insatiable erection that needed me so badly he couldn’t even talk until he took me again.

I opened my eyes.

He wasn’t there, but it wasn’t a surprise.

Still, that didn’t make it hurt any less.

Sweet memories flooded me. Memories of his hands all over my body, of the way he crashed through the trees after me, and of how half-scared I was until I realized who it was that had me pinned up against the tree in the woods.

With Reid, I’d go to bed every night hoping that the next morning he still wanted me. I’d go to sleep scared and shaking because I thought it’d just be a matter of time until he was done with me and ready for someone prettier, skinnier, whatever.

With Ash? I closed my eyes hoping that tomorrow I’d hear his voice. Hoping that tomorrow maybe I’d get a silly text message or a short phone call – there was no fear, only hope. That was... different for me.

I let out a little sigh that made me laugh softly when I realized how much my life was starting to resemble a Sandra Bullock movie. Except... I don’t remember when Sandra Bullock ever did what I’d just done, and I didn’t recall any of them where Matthew McConaughey was a bear.

It’s funny the way life just turns around sometimes.

I closed my eyes, hoping that somehow, I’d hear from the boy that made my heart stop.

Forty-two minutes later, I opened my eyes to something tapping at the bedroom window.

––––––––

A
t first I thought I was dreaming.

Dreaming again, I mean, because in the few minutes I’d been asleep, my mind conjured Ash up again and put him back in my bed.

But when I heard that tapping noise? I don’t know how I knew, but, well, sometimes you get those knots in your stomach that you read like a psychic newspaper.

Tap... tap... tap-tap.

I sprang up out of bed and ran to the window.

Of course, it was just about pitch black outside, but even though I couldn’t see the first damn thing, I knew what was happening. In the back of my mind though I wish he would’ve at least called first so I could brush my teeth.

When I saw Ash’s beautiful face emerge from the woods I thought that he was just going to have to deal with my wine breath and if he didn’t like it, well...

He stunned me with a smile and then took my breath away with how he locked his eyes on mine.

I couldn’t believe how striking he looked, down there, bathed in the silver-yellow moonlight. There was almost a glowing halo of light that seemed to lead my eyes up and down his muscled body.

He motioned for me to come to him, but I couldn’t stop watching. Every move he made, every breath he took, he somehow got more gorgeous. But it wasn’t just that – the way he looked was only part of my stunned silence. It was the way he was watching me, the way his eyes on my body made me feel.

The next time he motioned for me, it was like I was being pulled by a tractor beam. I wanted to go right out the window and leap into his arms, but thankfully I decided at the last moment to use the door.

“Just a sec,” I said, when I opened the window and stuck my head out into the slightly cool near-midnight. “I’ll... come around the other way.”

I turned from the window and then back toward it. “Why are you here? You
are
here, right?” I asked, patting myself on the cheek. “This isn’t another of my obnoxious dreams, is it?”

Ash’s cocky grin, and a toss of his shaggy hair wasn’t something I could dream up. “I don’t have long,” he said. “But I’d wait all night to see you for just a few seconds.”

Of
course
he could somehow make me wet and hot and weak all at once with just a couple of words. Of course he could. I grinned again – I couldn’t help my grinning or my giggling no matter how silly it was. He made me feel, like I told Henry, like a giddy, excited kid, falling in love for the first time.

Oh God.
I froze with my hand on the front door.
Is that what this is?
A shock that was half-terror and half-anticipation shot through me.
No way am I falling in love with this guy. Right? Or... oh God - did I already?

“You’re a real catch, aren’t you?” I asked him, still grinning out the window, beaming from ear to ear.

He shook his head. “Nah, not me. You’re the one who got caught,” Ash said.

If I were wearing any panties, they’d be embarrassingly soaked.

For the first time in my life, I was
glad
I forgot to put on underwear before I went to bed.

Giggling, I stuck my head out and blew a kiss to him. “Be right down,” I said.

Quickly I threw on an old tee, a hoodie from the clothes pile beside my bed, and the pair of jeans I had on earlier in the day.

A soft, melodic whistling was coming from where I knew Ash was waiting. It sounded a little bit like wind chimes. The sound was sweet and soft and velvety as it caressed my ears. No matter what, I knew I was going to go back around the building and I knew I was going to see him.

Crazy or not, this was no mistake.

I smoothed down my hoodie and turned the corner, and walked almost straight into an arm that was extended in front of my face.

On one end of it was the old, mottled red brick of Mrs. Whipplebottom’s apartment. On the other end was...

A kiss.

I could hardly keep myself standing when I tasted Ash’s lips against mine and then swirled my tongue against his. Both of his hands cupped my face, holding me helpless and warm between them. He pulled away, gently sucking my bottom lip and then trailed kisses from my earlobe to my chin.

“I couldn’t wait,” he said in a muffled, kiss-interrupted voice. “I had to get away and see you. I woke up this morning from a dream about being with you and... well it might be the craziest thing I ever did, aside from becoming a professional fighter, but if you walked away from me right this second, the last six hours of driving would be worth it.”

“Six hours?” I asked, breathless from the pleasure he was giving me. “Why did you... you could have just called. No one’s ever—”

“No one’s ever loved you the way I do, Violet,” he said. His words were hard and sure and comforting and so beautiful I could’ve died. “No one’s ever made me feel like this. I had a lot of time to think. I’m not letting you get away.”

He kissed me again, deep and hard, forcing my lips apart and driving himself deep. Against my side, I felt him swell and thicken, his heat burning through those jeans he always wore. Ash pushed me backwards against Mrs. Whipplebottom’s living room wall.

The gentle scratch of the brick against my bare skin where my shirt was pushed up a little sent a thrill up me. I opened my mouth to take a breath, and when I did, he tasted me again, his tongue eagerly exploring every nook and crevice.

“Love?” I asked again. “You...”

“Quiet,” he whispered, placing a finger across my lips. “You know what I said. I’m not repeating myself.”

His hardness, and his sternness had me burning, yearning, to touch him. I wanted him out of those jeans. I wanted to wrap my tiny hands around his...

“Come on,” he said, cutting off my fantasy. “I don’t want to keep your landlady up all night.”

“Aren’t you forward?” I asked, grinning and trying to hide my laugh. “I’ll have you know that I’m a... Ooh!”

He grabbed a handful of me and pulled me against his body, then lifted me off the ground. Like it was a natural reaction, I wrapped my legs around Ash’s thickly muscled waist and hugged him with my ankles.

One more kiss, deeper, stronger, more desperate than any of the others before, filled me with warmth.

“I might be forward,” he said, “but I don’t think I’m wrong. I’ve heard you squealing.”

The look he gave me could have stripped the panties off a water fountain.

“Come on,” he said, grabbing my hand. “I don’t have long – gotta make this count.”

Into the woods we went, and it wasn’t until I accidentally stepped on a very obnoxiously-angled acorn that I realized I’d forgotten something very important – shoes.

“Ow!” I cried out. “That coulda killed me!”

With intensity that didn’t make a whole lot of sense, Ash spun around. His nostrils flared and the muscles on either side of his neck flexed and relaxed with every breath. “What happened?” he growled in a low, dangerous voice. “Is there a snake? What’s—”

I bent over and picked my attacker up off the forest floor and held it in front of me, turning it around slowly between my fingers. I lit it up with the backlight from my phone. “Acorn,” I said.

The laughter that burst out of Ash was so pure and resonant and honest that I lost myself in his voice. It reminded me of my parents laughing at Billy Crystal movies. It reminded me of, well
me
laughing with Henry. It was like I’d found another best friend... who was apparently in love with me.

As we laughed, we drifted closer together until I could feel the heat emanating from Ash and pulsing against me. He put his arms around the small of my back and pulled me close again, tilting my head so I was looking up at him.

“So,” he finally said, after we just breathed for a few moments. “Did I catch you yet? Or are you still running?”

The kiss that penetrated me seconds later made my knees weak and my spine into jelly. It was a good thing he was being so handsy because otherwise I would’ve fallen into a floppy heap in the middle of a dirt path through the woods.

But oh so quickly, it became more than just a kiss.

Ash hooked his fingers on the waistband of my jeans and tugged eagerly. I slapped at him playfully like I was trying to bat him away, but the second that button slipped free from the loop that held my jeans shut, I suddenly forgot about all that.

The air that hit my legs was cool, sure, but the wet heat running out of me kept me warm.

Ash knelt, crunching leaves and twigs underneath him, and kissed my collarbones in a slow, downward path. He tugged the collar of my shirt down just enough to kiss right between my breasts before he pushed it up and cupped me in his hands.

“I never stopped thinking about this,” he said, nuzzling me with his stubbly face. “From the second I left until the second I saw you stick your head out that window, I never stopped thinking about you.”

I tried to respond, but his butterfly kisses that floated around my bellybutton made me throw my head back in gasping ecstasy. Nothing I could do was going to let me concentrate enough to form words, so instead I just ran my hands through his curly hair and let him take me away.

“So, so good,” I finally managed to whisper. His response was a soft chuckle that rumbled where he was kissing on the power part of my stomach.

His rough hands brushing against my nipples made them pucker. My desire for him took on a sweet edge fringed with just a little bit of red-hot need. Clutching his head to my chest, I directed Ash’s mouth upward to where his hands had me.

“So perfect,” he whispered, as he slid his tongue around my nipple. The moisture from his tongue wet the cloth of the sports bra I had thrown on, and when he gave me the tiniest little nibble, I groaned his name softly, my voice hitching in my chest. “Everything about you is... you just possess me, you keep my mind held in one place, Violet.”

Grabbing his hair, I intercepted another slow, hot lick by pulling his head back. “What do you mean?” I asked, leaning down and hungrily sucking at Ash’s cheek, then his neck.

“You make me calm,” he whispered. I felt my legs drawn up, and I latched on to the back of his neck, giggling, as he lowered me to the ground. “When I can’t think straight, when I get... angry,” he said. “I think about you and I can stop. I can breathe.”

“But how?” I asked.

His cock against the wetness between my thighs made me gasp and moan softly. The rough denim bit into my skin, and when I squeezed my legs around Ash’s waist, the brass button on his fly pressed hard into my stomach. His weight on me felt good... it felt
right
.

“We’ve... It’s like I just met you,” I lay my head back, relaxing into the leaves. “But it’s like I’ve known you forever. I’ve never been this comfortable around anyone, like, ever. It’s almost—”

“Fate?” he finished for me.

My cheeks burned with a mixture of desire and fear that maybe he was right – maybe this
was
fate? Maybe this is what I’d been waiting my whole life to feel. Was that even possible? One shitty date, and then a chance happening led me to the thing I’d always wanted and just about given up on?

His tongue went down my neck in slow, massaging waves. He squeezed my breasts harder, and then slid my bra up and over my head, along with my shirt. In the quiet of the woods, my nipples stood up, stiff and thrilled in the cold. He took one in his mouth, slowly rolling his tongue across it, over it, and around it, as he ran one rough-fingered hand down my side.

“I want to feel you,” I breathed. “Please don’t make me wait. I dreamed about you, I...”

“You what?” he asked, sucking on me as he pulled away.

Ash adjusted his weight, grinding against my clit with the rock hard thickness running down the leg of his jeans. “I, uh...” I blushed. “Maybe touched myself thinking about you.”

I chewed my lip, not really sure why I felt so embarrassed about what I’d just said. As soon as I saw the huge, beautiful smile spread across Ash’s face, any notion of embarrassment vanished.